Dead End
by Daring Dashwood
Summary: TP-verse. The stairs collapse beneath Link as he's on his way to fight Ganondorf. And something is waiting for him at the bottom...


Dead End

A/n – Dead hands terrified me as a child. They still do. Sorry if the beginning seems rushed.

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What is it with castles and stairs?

Link wondered as he ran up what seemed like the hundredth flight of stairs. He paused at the top to catch his breath. Midna emerged from his shadow, wrinkling her nose at the smell of his sweat.

"I don't see why you're so tired. It's only stairs." The imp huffed impatiently, crossing her arms over her small chest.

"Too…many…" Link wheezed out.

Rolling her eyes, Midna gestured to the next flight. "Come on, Link; we need to save Princess Zelda!"

Straightening, Link grew serious once more, and continued on. Midna slunk back into his shadow. The hero and the princess ran in silence, both lost in their own worries and thoughts of what was to come.

A sudden feeling of foreboding overtook Midna.

Oh no, the _stairs_—

"Link, _stop_!"

But it was too late. The ground gave way beneath where Link was standing. He cried out in surprise, limbs flailing wildly as he struggled for purchase, but there was no purchase to reach for, and he was falling, falling, _falling_—

"Use the hookshot, Link! The hookshot!" Midna screamed.

Link twisted in the darkness as he fell, racing against time to survive. He was rooting through the bag but there just wasn't enough time to find it. He knew it, Midna knew it, but they had to do _something_.

"Do that hand thing!" Link shouted, his panic only serving to double Midna's. The large hand elongated, trying to grab Link, but it was too late, far too late, and why hadn't she thought of this _before_—

* * *

All things considered, it could've been much, much worse. Midna was just able to cushion Link's fall before he hit the ground, quite possibly (more like most likely) saving his life. The hero passed out upon contact, but whether from the shock or the pain the Twilight Princess did not know. Although she couldn't see it due to the blackness, Midna heard the god-awful smack he'd made as he hit the floor, the nasty mixture of bones breaking and organs rupturing.

The imp patted him down in the dark, searching for his item pouch. The hero flickered back to life at her touch.

"Mid…na?"

"Hush Link, hush." She gave an internal whoop of joy as her fingers clamped around the bag. Roughly yanking it free from his belt, Midna began to rummage through it. Then, as if it was an afterthought: "And don't you dare even think about moving."

"I don't think I could move right now, even if I wanted to." As awareness took over again, Link couldn't stifle a moan as his various injuries began to make themselves known.

"Just bear with it for a minute, Link, I just have to find—ah, here it is!" The little imp produced a red potion from his item bag. After struggling for a few seconds with the cork, Midna pushed the concoction to his lips. "Drink," She ordered. Link did not object, and drank deeply from the bottle.

After Link polished off the bottle, the two sat quietly, waiting for the healing potion to take effect.

"Better?" Midna asked, eventually. She really wished she could see Link; that would make things much less difficult.

"It still hurts a little," Link admitted, grimacing. "I think there's another red potion in my bag. Somewhere." He tried to shrug, but thought better of it.

With an unusual obedience, the princess once again searched for a bottle.

"You usually don't have more than one of these," Midna murmured, feeling the sudden urge to make conversation. The total darkness and silence belonged to the night, not to the twilight. It unnerved her.

"Well, I figured I might as well stock up, seeing as I was going to battle Ganondorf," Link winced as he moved a wrong way. "Not that that's going to happen anytime soon now."

Midna grunted in affirmation to his statement as she nursed the potion through his bloodstained lips.

Once it was emptied, Link began to cough and sputter.

"Are you alright?" Midna couldn't withhold the slight worry hedging in her voice. She doubted he had yet another potion handy. Even if he did, if two potions couldn't fix Link, three wouldn't make much of a difference.

"Yeah." Another cough. "Sorry. Those things are nasty."

Midna's eyes had adjusted enough to see Link struggling to rise. She hovered over to him, gently guiding him back to the floor. "Easy Link. You shouldn't be moving yet."

The hero relented easily, sagging back to the cool ground below him. Midna frowned. If he was too weak to protest, then he was definitely too weak to warp. That meant that they had to find their way out of Hyrule Castle on foot.

"Can you get my lantern?" Link asked softly.

Midna wanted to smack herself for being such a complete, total idiot. First forgetting her own powers, and then their source of light in total darkness!

As if reading her annoyed thoughts, Link consoled her. "It's not your fault this happened, Midna. I should've watched where I was going. Been more careful."

Midna snorted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. After stubbing her toe on a piece of the step that had collapsed, (and cursing in a way quite unbecoming of a princess) Midna snatched up Link's pouch again, producing the lantern. She fumbled with it for a handful of heartbeats before she got it to light.

Although rather dim in a well lit room, the lantern glowed brilliantly in the darkness. Midna winced slightly as it burned her retinas.

The imp turned the shining light towards Link. Midna felt her breath catch, her heart stop. It was several moments of just watching him breathing before she was able to again. Her heart fluttered and floundered, but eventually resumed its normal steady rhythm.

_Oh Link, how are you even_ alive? She wanted to ask. But she knew the answer. She need only look to his left hand to see the mark of the goddesses.

Link cracked a small, slightly pained grin. "Do I look that bad?"

"No. You look worse." And it was true. Link looked as if he had just gone bathing in a river of blood. The vermillion liquid had spilled from his lips, his nose, his eyes. His green tunic was damp and ruddy. As if that wasn't bad enough, Link's right arm—not his sword arm, thankfully—was twisted in an awkward angle. Had the wound been internal, the potion might've healed it. But Midna could see the white bone peaking out, and did all she could to not vomit at the sight of it. Now any small hope Midna had had of warping out of this hell hole had been dashed: Link's body couldn't survive the strain.

"So. Where—where are we?" Link croaked.

Midna shrugged. "It must be the basement. You were falling for quite some time. It's strange though," She mused, pulling out Link's map. "This place isn't on your map. Wherever we are, it must've been here before the castle was."

"Before the castle?"

"Yes," She murmured, thinking. "When Princess Zelda…gave me her energy, I obtained her wisdom as well. Apparently, after Ganondorf had been sealed away by the sages, the Hylians built another castle on the ruins of what was once a prison during the Imprisoning War."

"I thought that was what Arbiters' Grounds was for."

"This prison was far less…uncivilized."

Link raised one blonde eyebrow. "Uncivilized…?"

Midna shrugged, searching for another way to word it. "Barbaric. It was more of a torture chamber than a prison. There were several throughout Hyrule, the most noted ones being in the bottom of a well and behind a graveyard in Kakariko."

"Great."

"Hey, you asked."

A skittering sound broke off any further banter. The lantern's feeble light quivered dangerously, but held.

"Midna," Link whispered, edging back, hands searching blindly for his sword. It had been jostled from its sheath in the fall. The hero cursed himself for not realizing it sooner. "I don't think we're alone down here."

Link scanned the ground in front of him rapidly, searching for the telltale glint of metal. With his one good arm he inched backwards, further and further away from the light. He hated to do so, but it was either fight in the darkness against whatever this thing was, or just die in the light.

_Maybe it's just a mouse or something, _Link thought desperately, not wanting fear to get the best of him. He had the Triforce of Courage for a reason. _If not a mouse, then a low level monster. Nothing to worry about, really. The darkness is just making me paranoid._

Link would've believed himself, too, if not for the sudden sound he was hearing. It was a strange blend of crunching, moaning, howling, and slurping, like nothing he'd ever heard before. Even re-deads weren't this unsettling, and that was saying something.

"Midna, do you see my sword? Can you give me my sword?" He asked quietly, not wanting to draw attention to himself. At least the beast, whatever it was, wasn't anywhere near the lantern, which meant it was far enough away from Link to give him enough time to find his sword.

Link flipped onto his stomach painfully, bones creaking in protest. His sword arm drug his body through the dirt and grime, still searching urgently for the Master Sword. A wrong move sent his broken arm banging against the floor, and the hero just barely managed to bite back the moan of pain. The odd slurping had ceased, but the creature was still moaning and groaning its heart out.

Link's hand touched something that was decidedly not the floor. He squinted, trying to will his vision back to him. It didn't work. Feeling the bumps and grooves, and the firm feel, Link drew back from it in horror as he realized what it was.

A human skull.

_Do not panic. If you panic, you are dead. _

Link was finding it increasingly hard to heed his own advice.

The lantern's light flickered, and caught on something not that far away from Link to his left. Link grinned. He'd found the sword at last.

The Hylian's movements were slightly quicker now, now that he knew where the Master Sword was. As he seized the weapon and flipped himself over again, it finally dawned on Link that Midna had never responded to his questions. She'd been eerily silent, in fact.

"Midna." It wasn't exactly a statement, but not a question. Despite himself, Link found dread and fear pooling in his stomach. Midna wouldn't abandon him after everything they'd been through together, not now, when he needed her the most.

Right?

Any thoughts of Midna fell to the wayside as the lantern's light was snuffed out.

_It's fine, _One part of Link's brain assured. _It's perfectly fine. You have your sword, and your ears have great hearing. You're _fine.

The rest of his mind was shrieking in fear.

Something _moved_—

A feral snarl was all the warning Link had before teeth were clamped around his arm. Screaming, Link drew up the Master Sword with his other hand to—

_Crunch. _

What erupted from Link's mouth then was not a shriek, not a scream. It was something much more guttural, more agonized, more inhuman than anything Link had ever heard before. It had taken him quite some time to realize the horrible sound was coming from his mouth.

Blood spurted out from what was left of Link's right arm like the water at a Great Fairy's fountain. Link writhed and thrashed like an animal, using his legs, his remaining arm, anything and everything he had to keep the monster away from him.

All of a sudden there were hands on him everywhere, trying to rip the hair from his scalp, tearing the protruding bone out of his arm, ripping off chunks of flesh from his other arm, nibbling on his toes.

But more than anything, the freezing and bloodied hands were holding him in place.

For what became obvious as the snarling, gurgling thing descended upon his stomach, ripping away the frail flesh with uncanny ease in order to dig into the main feast, the franticly pumping organs.

Link opened his mouth to scream, something he regretted almost immediately, as one of the hands had climbed down his mouth and though his throat, ripping out the vocal cords.

Link suddenly knew _exactly_ what had happened to Midna.

The monster positioned above him slurped up his intestines gleefully, first the small and then the large one. It had been such a long, long time since it'd had such a good meal. Sure, the boy was small and skinny, but the dead hand sure wasn't complaining.

And that was how the hero of both the Twilight and the Light realms died: in unbridled agony as one of the last remaining dead hands tore out meaty chunks of his still beating heart.

* * *

-Fin-

Great. Now I need to calm down and watch Scrubs before going to bed.

-The-Sharp-Machete-


End file.
